The 18th Street gang is a huge transnational gang in Los Angeles.

The gang is one of the most rapidly expanding criminal groups in the country, with a reach that extends across 32 states, from Maryland to Hawaii.

18th Street gangsters have been linked to homicide, extortion, alien smuggling, drug smuggling, auto theft, and running massive document mills in New York City. These "mills" paper the streets with fraudulent government identification allowing anyone to gain fresh lines of credit, government benefits, and driver licenses.

Florencia 13 nearly turned Los Angeles into a war zone.

Florencia 13 works closely with the Mexican Mafia and is a rival of the 18th Street gang. Florencia 13 is part of a terrifying gang war scene in Los Angeles, and it also has influence in more rural states like Virginia and Iowa.

Gang members have been charged with offenses ranging from piracy to conspiracy to selling drugs to murder. In August, three dozen members of Florencia 13 were indicted for racketeering and drugs. At the time, the Los Angeles Times reported that the gang allegedly "controls swaths of Los Angeles County" and had outposts there for drug-dealing and illegal gambling.

Barrio Azteca's violence comes straight from the Mexican cartels.

Originally based out of El Paso, Texas, Los Aztecas are a powerful paramilitary force on both sides of the Mexican border. Many of the gang's members are recruited from Texas prisons, with some of the organization's most notorious activity taking place inside prison walls.

The Almighty Latin King Nation preys on damaged children to fill its ranks.

Formed in Chicago in the '40s, the Almighty Latin King Nation (ALKN) has a strictly organized structure and is one of the biggest Hispanic gangs in the U.S. The gang's influence stretches to 34 states, with an estimated 18,000 members in Chicago alone.

Although the gang is splintered into the original Chicago clique and an east coast set, all members identify as Latin Kings. Members subscribe to the group's religious aesthetic, which calls for the eventual rebirth of a member as a New King, enlightened and ready to serve the downtrodden peoples of the world.

In February, the Times of Northwest Indiana reported on a former ALKN member who says that he and his former gang members were nothing more than terrorists:

"[We are] a terrorist organization looking to make your child a domestic terrorist.

"Gangs will teach your children how to use guns, clean them, take them apart and reassemble them. With them, your child will even learn how to make bombs; invade and rob homes; how to injure and/or kill someone using different methods; and make, smuggle and sell drugs."

Fears of a Somali gang war are plaguing Minnesota.

While some Somali immigrants adopt Blood or Crip membership, separate Somali gangs are becoming more prevalent across the country. They often experience tension with other African-American gangs, such as groups comprised of Ethiopian refugees.

Somali gangs have been involved in alien smuggling, human trafficking, credit card fraud, prostitution, and violent crime. Minneapolis continues to have problems with Somali gangs. Over the summer, a number of shootings aimed at Somalis sparked fears of a gang war in the Somali community in Minnesota.

MS-13 is one of the most sophisticated criminal organizations in the Western Hemisphere.

After recently occupying headlines in the national press for its part in a Virginia double shooting that wounded a pregnant teenager, La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) is now seizing global headlines for its international political influence.

The gang is keeping voters from the polls in the tight El Salvadoran presidential election. That fighting is already affecting the drastic need for political change in an already heavily destabilized country.

The gang's level of sophistication became apparent in October 2012, when federal authorities labeled MS-13 a "transnational criminal organization." MS-13 was the first-ever street gang to get this designation, which barred banks from dealing with its members, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The gang — which began with Salvadoran refugees including many ex-soldiers — has branched out into extortion and human trafficking, according to the Times. MS-13 is also known for particularly gruesome crimes, including hacking a pregnant, 17-year-old informant to death.

The Trinitarios are recruiting American kids straight from school.

Formed in New York's prison system in the 1980s, the ultra-violent Trinitarios quickly spread to the city's streets as inmates did their time and brought home new and deadly skills. Its influence is now felt in all five boroughs of New York City and in at least 10 states.

The predominantly Dominican gang holds deadly rivalries with Bloods, Crips, and Dominicans Don't Play (DDP). It is also renowned for recruiting in high schools throughout New York and New Jersey. In December 2012, dozens of alleged Trinitarios in the Bronx were charged with nine murders and 24 attempted murders.

The Hermanos de Pistoleros Latinos, aka, "the brotherhood of Latin gunmen," dominates Texas' prisons and its streets.

Another prison gang, Pistoleros Latinos, was born in and now dominates Texas' correctional facilities. Outside prison, the Hispanic group owns the streets of Laredo, in the state's south, and has strong ties to Mexican drug-runners across the border.

Pistoleros Latinos is heavily organized with its own constitution, traditions, and life-long membership, often marked by life-size tattoos of handguns inked just above operatives' pants-lines.

The Mexican Mafia was born in a juvenile correctional facility in Tracy, Calif. in the 1950s but has extended its reach into Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Control is decentralized with hundreds of operatives in prisons throughout the U.S.

The Mongols are an outlaw motorcycle gang with international reach.

Like many motorcycle gangs that band together to break the law, the Mongols proudly identify as "one-per-centers." This designation is a swipe at the American Motorcycle Association, which has claimed 99% of bike riders are law-abiding citizens.

In 2008, a three-year federal sting resulted in the arrest of 61 Mongols on offenses including racketeering, murder, drug trafficking and money laundering. More recently, a member of the Mongols got two life sentences for the murder of Mark “Papa” Guardado, the president of the San Francisco chapter of Hells Angels.

Their weapons of choice include guns, knives, brass knuckles, lead pipes, and steel-toed boots. The Mongols have chapters in eight countries, according to their official website.

The Vagos Motorcycle Club specializes in marijuana and methamphetamine sales.

BONUS: The Juggalos deny being a gang, but the FBI takes them seriously.

AP Photo/Carlos Osorio

Two members of the Insane Clown Posse, which sued the FBI.

In a controversial decision, the FBI officially listed the face-painted fans of the horrorcore rap group Insane Clown Posse — known as Juggalos — in its 2011 gang threat assessment. At the time, the FBI said the Juggalos had a loose structure and unclear motives.

Many Juggalos only engage in low-level crime, like simple drug possession and theft, the FBI acknowledged. But the FBI said in 2011 that it noticed increasingly gang-like behavior, and that the Juggalos had committed more serious crimes "such as felony assaults, thefts, robberies, and drug sales."

Insane Clown Posse has fought back against the FBI's decision to label Juggalos gangsters. The group sued the agency in January, claiming the gang designation violated the Constitutional rights of Insane Clown Posse fans to express themselves. The Juggalos have also created a website, "Juggalos Fight Back," which opposed their designation as a violent gang.